Claude Stanush
Claude Stanush has won both state and national awards for his writing. Starting out as a newspaperman at the San Antonio Light, he went on to work for 13 years on the staff of LIFE magazine, successively as Hollywood correspondent, science writer, religion editor, chief of correspondents in Washington D.C., and associate editor in New York City. Accolades for his LIFE stories include awards from the World Council of Churches (for his work on the series "The World's Great Religions") and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (for his essay "The Geography of the Universe"). Another of his LIFE essays inspired the film "The Lusty Men" (RKO Pictures), which Premiere magazine named an "unsung classic" of American cinema. As a freelance writer, he has written short stories, essays, film scripts, an oral history, and recently, in collaboration with his daughter Michele, a novel All Honest Men (which received a starred Kirkus Reviews rating and was on a number of "recommended reading" lists). Awards for his fiction include a creative writing award from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as one of Texas' highest literary honors — the J. Frank Dobie Award and Fellowship (given by the Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas). He was a co-screenwriter on "The Newton Boys" (Twentieth Century Fox), a 1998 feature film based on his work. A documentary film, "The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang," created with David Middleton, won the gold medal in its category at the Texas Film Festival and the International Film Festival in the Virgin Islands. Stanush and David Middleton also created an oral history of Willis and Joe Newton, "The Newton Boys." Mr. Stanush also has a book of newspaper essays, The World in My Head, and a collection of short stories, The Balanced Rock. One of these, "The Story of a Bronc Rider," first published in the University of Nebraska literary magazine Prairie Schooner, was voted the "best story of the year" by the editors.